


Hang Your Head, Heavily

by HoloXam



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Claustrophobia, Drabble, Drabble Sequence, Drowning, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Horror, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Zolf's family, mining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28549953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoloXam/pseuds/HoloXam
Summary: “That’s the wind, Zolf,” Feryn tells him when he asks, and Zolf pulls a face at him, because since when did the wind have voices in it?In which The Buried is Poseidon, or Poseidon is The Buried, and Hope only is an option when you have choice.
Relationships: Poseidon & Zolf Smith
Comments: 62
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

He hates the mine. 

Hates tin. 

Hates the dark, the lack of colours. 

Hates the way the walls seem to shift, closing in on him, squeezing him. Hates the weird underground rumbling that nobody ever acknowledges. 

“That’s the _wind,_ Zolf,” Feryn tells him when he asks, and Zolf pulls a face at him, because since when did the wind have voices in it? 

Even out in the open, the _ore itself_ is so boring. Brown, heavy and dirty, the metallic sheen of it oily and entirely uninteresting. 

“It’s an honest living,” his father says, shoving a pickaxe into his hand. 


	2. Chapter 2

“How long does a dwarf live?” 

His mother looks up from where she’s seated on the ground, hacking rock off the ore. 

“A long time, love,” she says. 

“What’s a long time?” Zolf crosses his arms. He’s 25, and thinks that  _ that’s  _ a long time to be stuck hauling tin.

“I don’t know,” his mother says. “Your great grandmother lived to be 280, the stubborn crone. You remind me of her, sometimes.” 

“Great,” he says. Something bitter curls in his gut.

“And lose the frown, son,” his mother says. “Lest the wind changes.” 

He bares his teeth and stomps off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued :)


	3. Chapter 3

The mine entrance looks like a mouth. Gaping and with rocky teeth, waiting to devour him and his entire life.

“Ye' cominʼ down, slacker?” 

Feryn's voice echoes strangely from inside the shaft, bouncing off the walls, cheery tone lost to the hollow recoil from the rock. 

280 years.  _ Two hundred and eighty.  _

Zolf never knew that the future was so heavy. 

The thought pulls him in headfirst, and he stumbles to the cart. 

Feryn gives him a grin and a hand up. Zolf thinks he struggles more than he should, pulling him off the ground. 

The descent feels like falling.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for respiratory issues in this one.

"You only ever talk about that stupid old mine," Zolf's first girlfriend says. She's his girlfriend, insomuch as she's a girl, and she's his friend, and she runs her fingers through the beard he's trying to grow, complaining about its dusty dryness. 

"If you hate it so much, why don't you do something else? Something you want?" 

He tries to tell her about gravity, instead. 

It's stronger in the mineshaft, and it shouldn't be. 

It makes his knees ache. Traps the air at the bottom of his lungs, rocky phlegm that won't come out. 

She's gone not long after that. 


	5. Chapter 5

The ore twists, extending downwards into the earth. 

The mine follows. 

One impossible cartload of granite at a time, each one heavier than the last, measures the passage of time - rock is time, the way time is money.

The tunnels are deeper and, despite the fact that Zolf has not grown an inch in years, more cramped and narrow than before. 

Something lurks there, humming in the echoing of footsteps and hammerings, taking on his father's disapproving frown in the dreams that haunt him at night. 

“The path is cut,” it says. “Press on or perish, at your own pace.” 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: character death.

He knows he's fucked up, the second his boot collides with the beam of timber stabilising the tunnel roof.

The rock _itself_ emits a deep, moaning rumble, triumphant almost, as the pole scrapes, wobbles, _falls._

The snap in the roof is sudden, the ensuing seconds motionless and stretching towards infinity. 

Then Feryn yells and shoves Zolf away. 

They look at each other. 

Then the roof comes down. 

When the dust settles, Zolf is on his ass without a scratch.

There is rubble inches from his toes, and he is alone. 

For the first time, the mine is utterly, overwhelmingly silent. 


	7. Chapter 7

They bury Feryn in the ground. 

At the wake, Zolf sneaks drink after drink, trying to forget the tightness of his suit, the strangling crowd of guests, and how heavily Feryn’s ring sits on his finger. 

The cruel irony of returning Feryn's body to the dirt.

Eventually he sneaks off, drunk and thoughtless until he finds himself back at the mine, staring into the gaping nothingness. 

He ignores the  _ DANGER!  _ sign at the entrance, and stumbles in. 

Standing in the darkness, he listens for the familiar groaning rumble. 

When he finds it, it seems to come from inside his throat. 


	8. Chapter 8

He is so numb he might as well be dead. 

After the funeral, he spends three days in bed, lead-limbed and with less and less of a claim to hungover. 

The nightmare wearing his father's face watches him with an uncharacteristic curiosity in its green eyes. 

"What do you  _ want?"  _ Zolf spits at it, the sticky scream in his throat too dense to lift off.

"For you to keep going," it says. Or maybe that  _ is  _ his father, hovering in the doorway of Zolf's room. 

It's an impossible inevitably. He turns his face away and shoves it into a pillow. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: Tags updated with 'grief' and 'drowning'.

Zolf is pushing his hands into a pool of black sludge. 

The mud is cool and soft in the spaces between his fingers, and for a moment he wonders if it could be a calming, mineral-rich balm on the throbbing knot of grief if poured down his throat, or if the fiery pain in his lungs would bake the mud into shards of sharp and brittle slate. 

He pushes in deeper, and, under his palms, in the clay-saturated water, he sees familiar faces twisted in breathless agony. 

He holds them down until they go slack. 

Wakes up thrashing for air. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We return to the Buried, after a brief respite!  
> Let me just take a moment here to thank you all for your lovely comments - it means so much more than I can express, and keeps me warm about this drabble-fest. Thank you all <3

The manner of Feryn's death stays between Zolf and the mine – people call it _accident,_ and mourn in practiced, undemanding ways. Cave-ins happen; such is the way of things. 

The year turns to autumn, a stagnant high-pressure system keeping everything crisp and dry, and he wakes with salt on his face, moisture sucked out of tears he can't remember crying, shocked to see yellowing leaves and abandoned mourning dress. 

Months are nothing against the vast expanse of life expectancy stolen from the dead, and Zolf thinks of Atlas, judged to shoulder _future_ rather than the sky. 

His stolen, dense forever.


	11. Chapter 11

At the pub, there's a poster from the Meritocratic Navy. 

_ Enlist today, _ it says. 

Zolf stares at it, edges blurring together as he attempts to drown down everything. The words stay crystal clear. 

_ Enlist.  _

_ Today.  _

His dreams change; soon, he is fantasising about open oceans and vaulted skies, and the taste of salt solidifies on his tongue, sharpening the flavour of malt and death. 

It pulls at him, the salt; he sees himself crusted over, protected from dust, and with wind in his hair. 

One following morning, head throbbing from permanent hangover, he signs his name on the recruitment form. 


End file.
